With another NCAA champion about to be crowned, the powers that be must be marveling. THEY did THIS? It all started out as a fairly small tournament six decades ago. Now look. It's bigger than "E.R." It's bigger than "Seinfeld." It's even bigger than Rick Majerus.
Final Four weekend has become a bad time not to be a basketball fan. You simply can't avoid it -- unless you know how to avoid newspapers, magazines, television, radio, the Internet and annoying neighbors wearing Duke sweatshirts.Other than that, it's easy.
It's only fitting that Ohio State would end up in the Final Four, exactly 60 years after the first NCAA Tournament was held. That's because the Buckeyes were one of two teams to play in the first NCAA championship game, at Evanston, Ill. Back then there was no Final Four, just a Final Two. Jimmy Hull did his darndest to get the Buckeyes a national championship, but his 12 points weren't enough. Oregon had three players in double figures. The Ducks turned out to be everything they were quacked up to be.
Unfortunately, it didn't last. They haven't been back since.
On one hand, the misfit in this year's Final Four was Ohio State, the only non-No. 1-seeded team in the Finals. The others got there because they were supposed to; Ohio State got there because SOMEONE had to play the underdog role. On the other hand, the only real stranger to the Final Four circus isn't Ohio State, but Connecticut. The Huskies have never previously made the Final Four. Duke has been there 12 times, Ohio State nine and Michigan State three.
The Huskies are saying, "Why didn't you tell us about this before?"
The growth of the tournament, and the Final Four, is your classic rags-to-riches production. After the first championship was played in 1939, it took seven years before the word really started getting out. But after that, things changed quickly. That's because in 1946 the championship game was televised for the first time. It was also the first year four teams, rather than two, ad- vanced to the finals site. The title game was aired locally in New York and viewed by an estimated half-million people. Already the NCAA was spreadin' the news. The committee moved in 1954 to televise the Finals nationally.
March Madness was up and running.
Despite the widespread suspicion that WAC teams get no respect from the bid committee, that isn't entirely true. In 1951, when the NCAA field was expanded to 16 teams, the WAC's predecessor -- the Skyline or Mountain States Conference -- was one of 10 conferences that got an automatic berth. That league included BYU, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado State.
By 1971 the Final Four had become a major production. Over nine million homes saw the semifinal game between Kansas and UCLA on television. Two years later the NCAA moved the format from Thursday-Saturday to Saturday-Monday. Not only did it attract more viewers, it gave people who work in offices something to talk about all day Monday. It became a long weekend even when it wasn't.
In 1978 the NCAA realized it was giving away something it could sell for big bucks. Thus, the practice of complimentary tickets to the championships was banned. There went the ducats for your cousin Herb. From then on it was pay-as-you-go. Problem was, it was starting to get hard to find a ticket to pay for anyway.
The University of Utah, which hosted the 1979 Finals, was eliminated from ever doing so again, thanks to a 1983 decision; that's when the NCAA set a minimum of 17,000 seats for the host arena. Soon to follow was the coming of the big-dome Final Fours -- large crowds but poor sight lines. Warehouses like the Kingdome, Alamodome, and this year's Tropicana Field have already hosted the event. Soon to come: the RCA Dome, Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and Georgia Dome, which are the sites for the next three years.
Score a ticket for one of those games and you'll think you're watching from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Still, the NCAA has never made a secret of the fact that it's in this for money, not the aesthetics.
CBS logged a then-record amount of NCAA programming in 1986, airing almost 41 hours. You couldn't see so much as a rerun of "Mr. Ed" without being interrupted by the latest NCAA update. Your favorite nighttime sitcom? Forget about it. If you don't like hoops in March, make it a Blockbuster Night.
The Final Four knew it had arrived big-time in 1994, when President Bill Clinton became the first sitting president to attend the Finals. That was no big surprise, considering Arkansas was in and Clinton was from Arkansas. In cheering for the Razorbacks, Clinton confirmed just what Paula Jones contended all along -- the man's a pig at heart.
Since then, both Clinton and the Razorbacks have fallen out of favor. Nevertheless, the Final Four goes on. It's come far since those early years. So far, in fact, that it's now a better experience to watch at home.